fsulis3267fandomcom-20200214-history
Steve Wozniak
Early Life Born on August 11, 1950 at San Jose, California, Steve Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer, Inc. with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne in 1976. On February 7, 1981, an aircraft that Steve Wozniak was piloting crashed soon after takeoff from the Sky Park Airport in Scotts Valley, California. The plane stalled while climbing, then bounced down the runway, went through two fences, and crashed into an embankment. Wozniak sustanined sever face and head injuries, including losing a tooth, and also suffered for five weeks after the crash from anterograde amnesia, the inability to create new memories. He had no memory of the crash, and did not remember his time in hospital or the things he did after he was released from the hospital. Gh11e (talk) 14:29, September 23, 2012 (UTC)gh11e Career Steve Wozniak was the main designer on the Apple I and Apple II computers together with Steve Jobs (business brains) and tohers. The Apple II is noted as the first commercially successful line of personal computers, featuring a central processing unit, a keyboard, color graphics, and a floppy disk drive. In 1984, Steve Wozniak greatly influenced the design of the Apple Macintosh computer, the first successful home pcomputer with a mouse-driven graphical user. In 1971, one year after enrolling, Wozniak withdrew from the University of California, Berkely and developed the computer that eventually made him famous. By himself he designed the hardware, circuit board designs, and operating system for the Apple I. With the Apple I design, he and Steve Jobs were largely working to impress other members of the Palo Alto-based Homebrew Computer Club, a local group of electronics hobbyists very interested in computing. The Club was one of several key cneters which industry over several years. Unlike other Homebrew designs, the Apple had an easy-to-achieve video capability that drew a crowd when it was unveiled. After the plane crash accident, Wozniak left Apple and returned to college to finish his degree in electrical engineering and computer science. Wozniak did return to work for Apple Computers for a bridf period between in 1983 and 1985. Gh11e (talk) 14:29, September 23, 2012 (UTC)gh11e Contributions On April 1 1976, Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple Computer. Wozniak quit his job at Hewlett-Packard and became the vice president in charge of research and development at Apple. their first product, the Apple I computer, was similar to the Altair 8800, the first commercially available microcomputer, except it had no provision for internal expansion cards. With the addition of expansion cards, the Altair could be attached to a computer terminal and could be programmed in BASIC. The Apple I was purely a hobbyist machine, a $25 microprocessor (MOS 6502) on a single-circuit board with 256 bytes of ROM, 4k or 8k bytes of Ram and a 40-character by 24-row display controller. It lacked a case, power supply, keyboard, or display, which had to be provided by the user. Gh11e (talk) 14:29, September 23, 2012 (UTC)gh11e Publications, patents, and other intellectual property Since leaving Apple, Wozniak has provided all the money, as well as good amount of on-site technical support, for the tchnology program in his local school district. Un.U.Son (Unite Us In Song), an organization Wozniak formed to organize the two US Festivals, is now primarily tasked with supporting his educational and philanthropic projects. In 1986, Wozniak lent his name to the Stephen G. Wozniak Achievement Awards (referred to as Wozzie Awards), which he presented to six Bay Area high school and college students for their innovative use of computers in th fields of business, art and music. Wozniak is listed as the sole inventor on the following patents: *US Patent No. 4,136,359 - "Microcomputer for use with video display" - for which he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. *US Patent No. 4,210,959 - "Controller for magnetic disc, recorder, or the like" *US Patent No. 4,217,604 - "Apparatus for digitally controlling PAL color display" *US Patent No. 4,278,972 - Digitally-controlled color signal generation means for use with display" Gh11e (talk) 14:29, September 23, 2012 (UTC)gh11e Awards and recognitions Steve Wozniak was awarded the National Medal of Technology by the President of the United States in 1985, the highest honor bestowed on America’s leading innovators. In 2000, he was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame and was awarded the prestigious Heinz Award for Technology, The Economy and Employment for “single-handedly designing the first personal computer and for then redirecting his lifelong passion for mathematics and electronics toward lighting the fires of excitement for education in grade school students and their teachers." Gh11e (talk) 14:29, September 23, 2012 (UTC)gh11e Critical analysis and intrepretation Frustrated with Apple management, Wozniak took up flying, and started courting Candi Clark, a former Olympic kayaker and accountant at Apple. In December 1980, Apple stock went public and was sold out in minutes. Within a month, Wozniak was worth about $50 million. In February 1981, while flying Clark and other companions to Los Angeles, Wozniak crashed his plane, nearly killing everyone on board. He married Clark four months later and decided to take a leave of absence from Apple in order to return to college. Frustrations with Apple management and nearly losing his life made him reconsider his priorities. "The company had become big business, and I missed tinkering. I just wanted to be an engineer." Gh11e (talk) 15:04, September 23, 2012 (UTC)gh11e Application to IT or ITC professionals Steve Wozniak, one of the founding father of the technology industry, is important to IT professionals to learn about because as one of the founders of Apple and the Apple I computer, he made a huge impact on the “microcomputer revolution.” Not only did he create the first programmable universal remote and wireless GPS, but it was his design on the Apple I’s circuit board, hardware and operating system that has set him apart. IT and ICT professionals should be familiar with his work as Apple products are becoming the most popular in the world and even though the computers has become more advanced since the Apple I, it is still his same basic design and to be able to work on a product, one must know its’ basics. Steve Wozniak changed humanity and society through It for the better and people in the IT profession should know who created the products they are working on. He is “the man behind the machine.” References Early Life: http://www.biography.com/people/steve-wozniak-9537334 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/woz_gig/woz.html http://biography.yourdictionary.com/steve-wozniak Career: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak http://www.biography.com/people/steve-wozniak-9537334 http://inventors.about.com/od/Computer-Geek/p/Steve-Wozniak.htm http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/woz_gig/woz.html http://biography.yourdictionary.com/steve-wozniak Contributions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/woz_gig/woz.html http://biography.yourdictionary.com/steve-wozniak Publications, patents, and other intellectual property: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak Award: http://inventors.about.com/od/Computer-Geek/p/Steve-Wozniak.htm Critical analysis and interpretation: http://biography.yourdictionary.com/steve-wozniak Application to IT or ITC professionals: